To Seem or Not To Seem

Abstract

This paper examines the semantics and morphosyntax of the Russian verb kazat’sja ‘seem’. Kazat’sja and vygljadet’‘look’ are raising verbs that promote their Stimulus argument within the syntactic hierarchy and raise an embedded constituent to the matrix clause. I argue that kazat’sja is a hybrid predicate combining properties of putative and perceptual verbs, and I discuss Apresjan’s proposal to distinguish two lexemes in lexicographic description: putative kazat’sja¹ and perceptual kazat’sja². The postulation of two lexemes is syntactically motivated, since kazat’sja² is an obligatory raising verb, whereas with kazat’sja¹ raising is optional, at least in some idiolects of Russian. Nevertheless, both kazat’sja¹ and kazat’sja² project three thematic roles: a Stimulus, realized as a sentential argument; an Experiencer, marked by the dative case; and an Observer, which may be conflated with the Experiencer or remain covert. I compare Modern Russian with nineteenth-century Russian and show that the latter licensed both the raising construction with kazat’sja and a competing construction with an expletive subject position. The analysis is based on the distribution of adjectives marked by the instrumental case versus non-agreeing predicatives in structures such as X-u kažetsja strannym / stranno + [STIMULUS].